What to include in a nondisclosure agreement

When you own and operate your own business, making smart hiring decisions is arguably just as important as protecting your business’s trade secrets. In fact, both efforts go hand-in-hand, because the people you hire to represent you are the same ones you must entrust with the ideas, formulas and other elements of your business that give you a leg up on the competition. At Bilicki Law, we recognize that drafting a strong nondisclosure agreement is your first line of defense against trade secret litigation, and we have helped many people navigate this and other issues relating to protecting intellectual property.

According to Forbes, having a solid nondisclosure agreement in place is important anytime you plan to grant employees access to proprietary information about the inner-workings of your business. Such an agreement need not be long and unnecessarily complicated. Instead, the most effective and strongest nondisclosure agreements are often those that run only a few pages in length or less.

So, what types of areas should you cover in such an agreement? First, you want to be very clear about to whom the agreement applies, and you will want to be equally clear about what information it covers and deems confidential. Second, you should include information about exactly when the agreement applies. For example, if you expect the people you hire to abide by the terms of the agreement both during, and for some time after, their course of employment, you need to stipulate this clearly in your nondisclosure agreement.

While these are some of the key areas any solid nondisclosure agreement should address, please note that this is not an exhaustive list of all elements you may want to include in yours. You can learn more about protecting intellectual property by visiting our webpage.